She pulls back, breathless, and whispers, “You can finish in my mouth this time.”

There’s a glimmer in her eye as she takes me back in her mouth—an excitement—and I know this is her way of thanking me for a proposal that has yet to happen. If I wasn’t already on the brink of exploding, I’d probably put a stop to this, simply because I know where her head is at.

Everything about this moment is wrong. Layla thinks she’s pleasuring her soon-to-be fiancé while I’m pretending she’s the ghost I’ve been slowly falling for.

It’s the strangest release I’ve ever had.

I don’t even enjoy it.

My legs tremble as she keeps her mouth on me, swallowing every last bit of deception I’ve been handing her. I don’t make a noise. I just close my eyes and wait for her to stop.

When she finally releases me, I can’t even bring myself to look at her.

All I can think about are the words she said to me the first night we met, after I’d just told her she was the best sex I’d ever had. “We always think that when we’re in it. But then someone new comes along, and we forget how good we thought it was before, and the cycle starts all over again.”

Is that all Layla was to me? Part of an endless cycle of relationships?

I thought for sure she was the one. I felt it in my bones.

Now all I feel is remorse, because it wasn’t until ten seconds ago that I realized I’ve already moved on to another cycle.

I’ve moved on to Willow.

It’s Willow I want to talk to when I wake up. Willow I want to see before I close my eyes. Willow I want to spend all my time with during the day.

I prefer Willow over Layla now, in almost every way, and it’s a heavy, appalling, shameful realization.

I hear the water running in the bathroom sink. I open my eyes and Layla is brushing her teeth again. She swishes the water around in her mouth and then spits it into the sink. She wipes the back of her hand across her mouth and smiles with pride. “Did I leave you speechless?” she says, laughing.

I have no idea what to say. I’m sorry wouldn’t be appropriate.

“That was intense.” It’s not a lie. Intense isn’t necessarily a good thing, and I don’t want to lie to Layla anymore. It doesn’t feel good.

She saunters back over to me and tucks me back into my sweatpants. She leans in and kisses me gently on the cheek, leaving her mouth on my skin when she says, “Go back to work. You can return the favor tomorrow night.” She backs away and takes off her shirt with a grin, and then finally gets in the shower.

The water has been running this whole time.

I walk into the bedroom and stare at our bed. The same bed I was on when I first began to fall in love with Layla.

Falling in love with her was weightless, like air was breezing through my bones.

Falling out of love is fucking heavy, like my lungs are carved from iron.

I walk over to the bed, and I drop down onto it. I don’t go back downstairs. I can’t face Willow tonight. I don’t even want to face Layla.

I just want to sleep.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Why do you think I’m able to touch things?”

Her voice rips me from the claws of a deep sleep. I open my eyes, and Willow is facing me, lying on her side. I don’t know what time it is, but it’s still dark outside.

I rub my eyes with the heels of my palms. “What do you mean?” My voice is still heavy with sleep.

“I can move things when I’m not in Layla’s body,” she says. “I can touch things. But you can’t see me, and I can’t even see myself, so I’m not made of matter. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe you’re made of energy. And you somehow channel that energy into something as dense as matter.”

She sighs and rolls onto her back. She stares at the wooden beam over the bed. “You’d think if that were the case, I wouldn’t be as strong as I am.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can move big things too. I did it once. Moved every piece of furniture in the Grand Room around in the middle of the night.”

“Because you were bored?” I ask.

“No. Because I hate Wallace Billings and I wanted to scare him.”

She has my full attention now. I lift up onto my elbow. “Who is Wallace Billings?”

She cuts her eyes to mine, and there’s a mischievous grin on her face. “He owns this place. I’m the reason he put it up for sale a few months ago.”

She looks proud of whatever she did. There’s a gleam in her eye, and I kind of find it fascinating. I’ve been wondering why this place was put up for sale.

She sits up, wrapping the bedsheet around her to cover herself. “You know how I can’t remember how long I’ve been here?”

I nod.

“Well, I know Wallace inherited this place right before I showed up. Just based on conversations I’ve heard him have. His mother owned it, and it passed on to him when she died, but he wasn’t sure what to do with it. If he should keep it open or sell it or move in. After a while, he started to lean toward moving his family here. And I know this is terrible, but I couldn’t stand him. He was such an asshole to people. His wife, his kids, anyone he spoke to on the phone. I couldn’t imagine sharing this place with him for however long I was going to end up being here.”

“What did you do? Haunt him?”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. But then she looks up and to the right. “Wait. I guess what I did could be defined as a haunting. I’ve just never really identified as a ghost, so to me, I was just pranking him.”

“What’d you do?”

She tucks her chin against her chest a little, looking at me somewhat embarrassed. “Don’t judge me.”

“I’m not.”

She relaxes a bit. “It was little things at first. I’d slam doors, turn off lights. Your typical ghostly encounters. It was fun watching him try to explain it all away. But the more I’d witness his asshole behavior, the bigger I went with the pranks. One night, after I decided I didn’t want him in this house for another day, I moved all the furniture around in the Grand Room. I moved the couch against the opposite bookshelf. I moved the piano to the other side of the room. I even moved books from one shelf to another.”

“What was his reaction the next day when he saw everything had been moved?”

Willow presses her lips together tightly. She moves her head from side to side with a sheepish look on her face. “Well . . . that’s the thing,” she says. “I moved everything while he was still in the room.”

I try to imagine what that must have been like for the guy—seeing an entire piano move across the room by itself.

“He put the house on the market that day, and he hasn’t been back since.”

“Holy shit,” I say, laughing. “That explains the rush to sell.”

She falls back onto her pillow, and she’s smiling proudly. Her smile is infectious. I lie down on my own pillow, smiling right along with her.

The moment makes me think back to the few things that happened when I first arrived here. Willow saving me from burning down the kitchen. Her cleaning up the wine spill. That’s hardly a haunting.